Judith Sakala is a sex worker in Chirundu, a transit point on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe on the trucking route from South Africa to East Africa. It is a key HIV/AIDS transmission hotspot and it is notorious for its congestion as hundreds of trucks try to cross every day. “I always insist on using a condom. Nowadays there is no one who can go and have sex with a client without a condom. So if I tell him to use a condom and if he refuses, I also refuse and go away. I can’t go without a condom – I have children and I worry about them a lot. I want to keep my children. Sometimes I think that maybe the man I am with is a widower and he’s carrying his wife’s ghost. So if he sleeps with me without a condom he will leave that ghost with me. Then I can go mad and leave my children. But especially my youngest, she’s too young. She still needs my love.”
